


Plight & Providence

by liquidengineers



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Arthur is a mess, Attempt at Humor, Cuddling, First Meetings, Fluff, Gen, I guess it’s sorta a cafe fic, I mean they meet in maccas, Light Angst, M/M, McDonald's, Mutual Pining, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Romantic Angst, Sexual Tension, latin students running amok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2020-10-01 20:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidengineers/pseuds/liquidengineers
Summary: The sun, burning low in the morning sky, backlights the guy’s head of blonde, framing his hair with a halo of glowing gold. God have mercy, groans Merlin’s sleep deprived brain, a prince come to sweep me into his arms and carry me out of this hole of study I’ve dug myself into.“Mmm,” murmurs the guy, staring lovingly at his yellow-wrapped food. “Beesechurger.”•Merlin is on scholarship and Arthur is a post-graduation mess





	1. Merlin

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy here we go
> 
> This was meant to be a one shot but now I’m just confused.
> 
> It’s unedited and written on my phone so go ahead and point out any mistakes thank u
> 
> Also I haven’t finished the show so i hope that doesn’t affect this
> 
> thank you williamsage42 for editing and tag assistance I’m a newbie so it helps lmao

**Plight & Providence; Ch1 **

The world gains a certain surreality when one walks through it with a tired mind. It’s not illusory (like so many surreal artists portray) so much as quietly whimsical; your eyes fix hazily on the horizon as your mind wanders a soft and limitless world. Everything has an edge of non-existence, as if you could slip out of your sleepy world at any point and wake up violently in a harsh Real World. 

Merlin has ‘slipped out of reality’ at least four times since he stepped foot in the crowded McDonald’s that he now sits in, drooping soporific into his less-than-adequate burger. A thick book is spread on the table next to him, sprawled with uniform rows of Latin text that blur in his drowsy vision. He blinks and stuffs his mouth with burger to keep himself hovering in the land of the living. 

He’s so consumed with preventing his eyes from closing that he barely notices the guy standing next to his table, brandishing his own tray. 

“Can I sit here?” the guy asks. “The other tables’re full up.”

Merlin’s head dips closer to the table as he loses his battle with his eyelids. The guy above him watches silently as Merlin faceplants into his burger. He takes that as his cue to sit and tentatively slips into the seat opposite, trying to pretend he didn’t just witness perhaps the most pathetic burger nosedive in history. 

Merlin shakes himself from his five second doze to find his nostrils being assaulted by a now-squashed burger. He wipes crumbs from his lip and sleepily glances up at the stranger he only vaguely registered sitting down a moment before. The sun, burning low in the morning sky, backlights the guy’s head of blonde, framing his hair with a halo of glowing gold.  _ God have mercy _ , groans Merlin’s sleep deprived brain,  _ a prince come to sweep me into his arms and carry me out of this hole of study I’ve dug myself into _ . 

“Mmm,” murmurs the guy, staring lovingly at his yellow-wrapped food. “Beesechurger.” He sinks his teeth deep, then notices Merlin staring.

Time halts as they eye each other nervously for a moment. The prince (as Merlin is apparently now referring to him as) chews and swallows. “You didn’t hear that,” he says eventually.

“I didn’t hear that,” Merlin repeats faithfully. “And you didn’t see me bury my face in this burger.”

“I did not see you bury your face in that burger,” says the prince. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, what burger?”

Merlin grins, his eyelids already drooping again. He stifles a yawn, languidly flipping his book shut and stuffing the remainder of his burger into his mouth. The prince watches him, amused. “Don’t fall asleep while you’re walking,” he has the audacity to say, with a dumb smirk on his dumb face. 

Merlin can’t think of a cutting comeback, so he just sticks his tongue out at him. 

——

  
  


There’s an elegant girl in his ancient literature class called Morgana. She possesses a graceful beauty that permeates her every action; even when she’s spitting insults, she does it with breathtaking poise. If Morgana was a man, Merlin would be all over her. Morgana is not, in fact, a man (but Merlin appreciates her anyway). 

He’s following her to her dorm room now. It’s not as exciting as it sounds — just more study, always more study. His textbooks are heavy in his arms and his legs ache from clambering up three floors worth of stairs. 

“Oh, forgot to say, my idiot half-brother’s crashing with me for a few days so he’ll be there, stinking the place up. Technically he’s not meant to be here at all so stay quiet about him,” Morgana mentions as they finally approach her door. Merlin couldn’t care less about Morgana’s idiot half-brother. He just wants to dump these damn heavy textbooks and sleep for forever. He says so. Morgana laughs. 

He’s not prepared to be whacked in the face by the glorious image of his Maccas Prince shirtless and dozing on Morgana’s bed. The prince squints sleepily at them. “Hey, it’s you,” he mumbles. 

“Beesechurger guy,” Merlin grins. “I didn’t know  _ you  _ were the idiot brother!” 

“What? Don’t call me that.” Maccas Prince blinks stupidly. “M’names Arthur.” He buries his head back in the pillows.

“Merlin,” says Merlin. 

“Sleep in your own bed, Arthur,” Morgana grumbles. Merlin assumes she’s referring to the pathetic pile of blankets in the corner of the room. Morgana gestures for him to put his textbooks on her desk (his relief is immeasurable). “Arthur’s been kicked out of his last pad. Friends don’t appreciate his useless couchsurfing, apparently.”

“Life sucks shit,” Arthur — not Maccas Prince anymore, nor Beesechurger Guy, his name is Arthur — calls, his voice muffled by bedding. “Wouldn’t be like this if dad actually cared.”

“Arthur,” says Morgana, “shut up. Merlin and I are studying.”

Arthur shuts up.

  
  


——

“Teach me Latin,” says Arthur.

They’re sitting on the sandy shore of the river that runs through a national park Merlin used to frequent as a child. He’s got his textbooks splayed on his lap, half-heartedly scanning the pages. Arthur’s paddling his feet absentmindedly in the water, his arm brushing against Merlin’s knee. Morgana is exploring the opposite shore with a few others from their literature class. The abandoned remnants of lunch lie in the sand behind them. 

It’s Summer and the air is thick with the smoke of nearby bushfires. Merlin has known Arthur for almost two months now, and yet he feels like he has loved Arthur for much, much longer. It’s a peculiar perception of some deep and ancient bond that’s held them together for years upon years; a flicker of an inexplicable recognition that ignites within his chest when he looks at Arthur. Perhaps he loved him in a past life. Perhaps he’s just been abstinent for too long. 

“Teach you Latin?” he queries distractedly, scouring his brain for the stem ending of a third declension ablative noun (neuter or masculine? He suspects it’s neuter). Arthur kicks his feet lazily in the water. Someone shouts, indistinguishable, over the other side of the river. 

“Yeah.”

Merlin looks up. “Um, well it’s complicated.”

“Teach it to me,” Arthur says again.

“I don’t know if I can just  _ teach _ it to you.”

“Wimp.”

Merlin nudges Arthur with his knee. “ _ ō fortūnātī, _ ” he says grandly, as if he’s reciting a monologue. “ _ quōrum iam moenia surgunt _ .”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. Merlin closes his sketchbook with a dull thump and drops it onto the sand next to him, stretching his legs out. “‘O fortunate ones, whose walls now rise’. It’s what Aeneas exclaims when he first sets eyes on Dido’s Carthage. He’s just fled from a city destroyed by the Greeks and he’s envious that Carthage, even unfinished, is already so much more grand. And yet he’s happy because he knows the remaining Trojans will find a home in this city.” 

“Poetic,” Arthur murmurs. His hair glows in the sun like it did when Merlin first set eyes on him. Merlin yearns to reach out to him, to touch him and ask him if he feels the same ache of familiarity between them. He sits on his hands. The air is too hot for comfort. 

“I can go into linguistics, if you want,” Merlin smiles. “Declensions and cases and participles. The imperative! The vocative! The confusing bits.”

Arthur groans.

“The third declension, now  _ there’s _ a real sucker…”

“Shut up, Merlin.” Arthur kicks water at him.

“You want me to teach you Latin!” 

“I want you to  _ shut up _ ,” Arthur grumbles. “Stupid idea anyway. I’m a dumbarse.”

Merlin sighs and flops backwards, his eyes screaming in relief as he closes them. The happy sounds of Morgana and his classmates filter through the trees. There’s a mutable complexion to the riverside world, as if the universe world is stretched out in front of them, just for them, purely for them to caper upon the summits of countless stars. Arthur is a pressing warmth beside him to call him back down and anchor him to the earth. He turns his head, the sun glowing red behind his eyelids. “You’re not dumb,” he mumbles sleepily.

“Am too,” Arthur murmurs back. “Can’t keep a job. Can’t follow my dreams. I’m stuck festering.”

It’s a languid world, out here. 

“It’s not like you, Merlin, you’ve got your life determined. You’re smart. You have a scholarship. You have potential. I scraped myself up to a pathetic graduation and now I’m all washed up only a year on.”

Stuck in deathless suspension, turning over and over and over. 

“Are you asleep?”

Merlin grunts. He’s hovering on the whimsical barrier between sleep and wake. His senses tingle as Arthur’s fingers settle lightly on his head, drawing slow circles on his scalp. With every pass of Arthur’s fingers through his hair his yearning to lose himself in the man’s embrace heightens until it burns through his veins with zealous desire. The sense of ancient affiliation is ever looming. Merlin has a hard time breathing.

“I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Arthur says, his voice quiet against the noise of Merlin’s craving. “I can’t place why.” 

He turns his head and lightly kisses Arthur’s thigh through his jeans. It feels right — like matching two puzzle pieces in a thousand-piece box. 


	2. Arthur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooo, final part! Sorry for the wait.
> 
> Arthur’s a soft bitch and don’t let yourself forget that. 
> 
> Once again, this is largely unedited (aside from a quick read through before posting) so please feel free to correct any typos or mistakes you spot :)
> 
> I feel like some plot points are unresolved but damn I don’t really wanna go back through now. Maybe I will later.

**Plight & Providence; Ch2**

Arthur has never met anyone like Merlin. The boy arouses such a relieving sense of attachment in him, as if he’s known him before but can’t quite remember his face. The hazy familiarity that hangs about him draws Arthur right in — falling in love with him feels like something he’s done before (even if the kid is the most impertinent person he’s ever met. No reverence for the gentry, Arthur muses, although he can  _ hardly _ be called the gentry. Not when his father leaves him grovelling in couch-surfing misery because he’s more concerned about his dumb company than his drowning son).

Still, his romantic interest in Merlin is yet to affiliate and Arthur doesn’t suppose it ever will. It’s not that Merlin wouldn’t return it — the way he kissed Arthur’s denim-clad leg held such tenderness and purpose, if not largely chaste. It’s more that he feels something big, and not necessarily good, might happen if anything like that strikes up between him and Merlin; even just their friendship causes something deep inside him to strain against invisible bonds. He doesn’t know what will happen if those bonds snap — he doesn’t think he wants to know.

Yet at the same time as this uneasy feeling, a part of his brain urges him onwards, tells him that if he doesn’t prompt intimate involvement with Merlin soon, he’ll have an actual aneurysm. Not that he particularly wants to put up with the kid now, caught in the midst of frantic exam preparation, running off his fucking arse while Arthur is forced to sit back and watch him burn out. It’s somewhat amusing, if not a little worrying. 

Currently, Merlin is quite literally crying over spilt milk. He’s on his hands and knees in his mother’s kitchen, staring teary-eyed at an upturned, kitschy plastic cup resting in a puddle of liquid. 

“Get up,” Arthur sighs. “It’s not that bad.”

“Arthur,” Merlin sobs, “you don’t understand. I was… I was gonna  _ drink  _ that!” He bursts into a fresh bout of tears.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Arthur massages his temples dramatically. “Look, you haven’t slept properly in a few days, you’re tired and emotional. It’s really not that bad. Clean up the milk and pour yourself another cup, and boom, it’s solved.” 

Merlin sniffs dejectedly. Arthur slides his hands under the kid’s armpits and hoists him up before he can start carding his hands forlornly through his wasted beverage. “Christ almighty, you’re really distressed about this.”

“It’s a distressing event in a man’s life,” Merlin responds, “when he drops his fucking milk. That was my  _ fucking  _ milk, Arthur, that was my  _ motherfucking milk _ .” The tips of his ears flush red. His hands are tightly balled by his sides. Arthur reckons he can even see the boy quaking with radiant anger. Talk about a mood swing. 

“Merlin, calm down.” Arthur says gently. “Would… would you like a hug?” He better want a hug, Arthur thinks hawkishly, he’s not one to give out hugs this freely. Although he’d be blind to not notice his long buried affectionate side rearing its embarrassing head for the young man shaking in milk-imbued anger before him. 

It’s a bit awkward — Arthur’s not entirely sure where to put his arms (is this a bro-to-bro hug or a an aggressively homosexual embrace?) and Merlin is just about snoring as soon as his head hits Arthur’s shoulder. His hair tickles Arthur’s jawline and the urging of long-lost memories just about explodes in Arthur’s chest. It chokes up his airways and rips his heart violently from his chest. He’s been here before, he’s been in exactly this same position before, he’s held Merlin close to him and felt his hair against his skin before. 

It’s been so long, Arthur thinks mournfully, then frowns and thinks  _ since when?  _

“Arthur?” Merlin asks with an air of uncertainty, his voice muffled by the blonde’s shoulder. Arthur pushes him away gently, holding him at arm’s length. Merlin’s eyes gleam momentarily with an arcane clarity that quickly evanesces and dissolves back into his dark irises. 

“I, uh, was gonna say something... but I forgot,” Merlin frowns. “Maybe I’m more tired than I think.”

“No shit,” Arthur grumbles, and their moment of calm quiescence is dispelled. “C’mon, take a nap. Won’t kill you. Besides, you’re hell to put up with in this state.”

He stands at Merlin’s door while he’s drifting off to make sure he doesn’t just get up and keep studying. It’s only four thirty but Arthur hopes Merlin’ll sleep through the night. He’ll get a bit of time to himself while the kid sleeps, clean up the milk in the kitchen and ponder what he can do for Hunith to thank her for letting him crash for a week or so. 

“I hate that you’ve only ever know me as tired,” Merlin murmurs from the bed. “I’m usually quite lithe and spritely, you know.” 

Arthur can’t help but snort. “You, lithe?! Merlin, you’re the clumsiest dolt I know!”

“Are not.”

“Are too! You’re like a newborn foal.”

Merlin cracks open his eyes and pouts. “You’re a prick.”

“Remember Gwen’s place?”

“Oh god,” Merlin breathes in horror. Even in the dim light of the room, Arthur can see the tips of his ears flush red. It’s almost cute.  _ Almost _ . He’s not quite that soft yet. 

Arthur grins slyly. “You must have broke what, four vases? Tripping over  _ nothing _ .” Soft? Oh no, not soft at  _ all _ . Teasing Merlin is his favourite pastime. He could live a whole lifetime of purely teasing Merlin 24/7, coaxing out that all-too-easy blush. 

“I’m actually going to sleep, goodnight.” Merlin turns his face away from Arthur, pressing his palms against his ears. 

“And then you tried to blame it on a non-existent lego, even after Gwen said she’d never owned lego in her life.” Arthur almost cracked a rib laughing that day. He giggles just thinking about it, and Merlin’s annoyance melts into a soppy smile. Arthur sometimes forgets that Merlin’s soft for him, too (not that Arthur’s soft, no, never). They’ve discussed the possibility of existing together in past lives many times before, and every single time Merlin’s romantic side opens its sickly sweet eyes and flutters its eyelashes suggestively at Arthur. Actually, scratch metaphor. The kid literally said to Arthur’s face, ‘ _ God almighty I must have been so in love with you for sleeping in your arms to seem just as appealing as shoving you onto a bed and having you answer to me. _ ’ Then he’d rattled off a long passage about passionate love.  _ mira res amore! _ or something like that.  _ sed amare se frustra uterque putavit. _ That had been a strange turn of conversation, definitely.

“God, when exams are over I’m gonna sleep for... sixty days,” Merlin vows, voice soft as his mind is touched by the torpid fingers of Sleep. Arthur runs his eyes along drowsy skin translucent in the light of the afternoon sun that slithers its way through cracks in the blinds and lines Merlin’s body with neat shadows. 

Then he thinks,  _ to hell with it _ , and sheds his own shirt, holding his breath as he slides beside Merlin between the sheets. It’s way too hot to be sharing a single bed. If Merlin’s coherent enough to notice, he doesn’t comment. 

The hand furthest from Arthur lies palm-up against blue cotton sheets, delicately curled ever so slightly in on itself. Arthur yearns reach over and lace his own fingers through Merlin’s.

“Sixty days?” he chuckles fondly. 

“Sixty entire days,” Merlin smiles. “And then I’m gonna kiss your stupid face because you’re my Maccas Prince and I think you always have been.”

Arthur lies without breathing for a good few seconds. His mind flicks back to that passing moment of absolute lucidity that had flitted through Merlin’s features not twenty minutes ago. He wonders how he fell for Merlin so damn hard, then wonders if he fell this hard the last time too. He wonders how many lives he’s lived searching for Merlin and if he’s ever found him before this moment in time. He desperately wants to recreate that simple perspicuity that aged Merlin by millions of years yet made him seem younger than ever in an instant. 

Eventually he does reach over and take Merlin’s hand, his forehead fitting snug against the boy’s neck, and whispers, “What did you remember before? In the kitchen.”

“It all fell into place and was gone in seconds,” Merlin whispers back. “I remembered it all and forgot it all just as quick.” He squeezes Arthur’s hand. “We’ll remember soon enough. If not in this lifetime, we’ll find each other again and remember together. I think we’ll always find each other.”

-

When Hunith comes home later that night to a neglected puddle of milk pooling on her tiled kitchen floor (already starting to smell), she pokes her head into her Merlin’s room to scold him, but instead finds her son and his prince locked in tight embrace as they sleep tangled around each other. The scene is haphazard and peaceful, and strikes a chord somewhere deep inside of her — somehow she knows that this is how it has always been, and this is how it will be time and time again. 

Hunith smiles to herself and gently closes the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The latin is from ‘A Tale Of Two Lovers’ and (should) say:  
‘How strange/wonderful love is! [But] they both imagined they loved in vain.’  
There’s probably grammar or vocab mistakes in there, put it down to Arthur recalling a passage spoken by Merlin... 
> 
> Once again, a big thank you to [WilliamSage42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilliamSage42/pseuds/WilliamSage42) for tag assistance and helping poor little novice me to navigate the archive’s mechanics. They have a wide range of their own fics, so check them out if you’re bored and want something else to read. 
> 
> Does anyone want to see more from these two? Comment bonus chapter ideas if you do and I might just write them up :)


End file.
